Has anyone seen an unwashed egg? Since hens have something called a cloaca through which both eggs and poop come (no separation of those two functions in birds), it’s got to be kind of gross… who cleans the kittens after? I wonder if this is a problem. I wonder if I remember my bird biology correctly. But this is kind of cute-EW. That should be a new category, perhaps, cute-EW. The stuffed breathing toys might qualify in a subcategory.

SHUT UP! This is beyond redonkulous and wayyyy fun. Chicken Litter.. bwahahahahhahahhaaa!
As for the poster about the chicken poo.. we here at CO don’t think our animals poo. They are too cute for poo.

Okay Peeps we have both Chickens and cats at our house. The cats do not chase the chickes. the chickens can beat up the cats if needed. In fact Darin our Male cat will help guard the baby chickens from others when we have them. Not to mention the mama chicken who is not to be messed with the minute she starts sitting on those eggs untill the chicks are about 3 months old. And as for the eggs when they come out. They are spotless. No Poop on them.

Also a little known fact our hens will all lay in one box not at the same time but one after the other. and if one of my hens is nesting on eggs the others will actually lay eggs in the nest with her there for a couple of days so their eggs will get hatched. I call it cooperative nesting.

In the picture it looks like the mama cat choose the hens nesting box for her kitten lair. and Roady reds are the most friendly(the girls) hens around.

“D’yah think this is how it looked on the Ark? Bet a whole lotta interspecies snorgling went on in there!”

…and thus, the Platypus was born… 😉

I’ve seen similar stuff when I was young. dogs nursing on cats, hens nesting on duck eggs, etc. I’ve never seen anything as radical as this though, but I’m not surprised. What a warm-comfy that would be!

I’ve heard of featherbeds, but this seems quite the reverse! However, if those sweet little kittehs aren’t bothered by it, it seems fine to me. I’m sure the warmth and protective position of the mother hen comforts them, too.

I wuz kinda worried that the Mom-cluck might be awfully heavy on top ‘o those kitties, but everyone seems to be fine here. Am I the only one who is wondering where Momkitty is? And if humanoids relocated the kits, or if there was feline intervention?

Well, I just gotta be serious here for a minit. According to the description, this seems to be a new scientific discovery of a hitherto unknown symbiotic relationship between cats and chickens! Alert National Geographic! Call the FDA! Boil some water!

I heard a story years ago about a broody hen who stole a litter of beagle pups from their mama. Ahw was discovered sitting on ’em and tucking them firmly back underneath her when they tried to escape. (The beagle pups were very new and young, so they didn’t fight back much, and fear not, all ended well.)

Shame on me – I’ve not read everyone else’s comments – but I’m tired and I want to go to bed. And I have to say… this is a gifted chicken – she’s figured out how to get out of the tunnel with no light at the end and still care about her children.

Aww, man how sweet. I remember seeing on TV where this mother hen would sit on a litter of kittens until mom cat came back to feed her kittens. The farmer said that this had been going on for some time. I guess the mother hen thought the kittens were strange looking chicks in need of protection while their mom was out.

OK – I went back and learned what everybody else said while my post was posted. When my Mom learned that I didn’t wash the pan I boiled eggs in, she was horrified (she was a home-ec teacher). I reminded her – that’s how we sterilize things, by boiling. She, who as a child was sent to collect the eggs, told me “You have no idea what they look like when you have to pick them up.”

Do you think that the eggs the hen laid are fertilized and that she’s trying to hatch them in the kitty nest? Or is this just an everyday eggs-for-omlets deal and the kittens get new eggs dropped on them each morning?

This was taken on our family farm. The mom made her nest in the chickens laying box and the chickens always lay in the same spot every day. It doesn’t matter if 6 little kittens showed up in the box or not.

We found out one day when we were looking at the kittens and found an egg in the box that they were all curled up around. After that we tried to get it on camera with the hen sitting in the box and we got this picture.

You can even see momma cat standing around nearby in this video on youtube of it.

If you look around at all our youtube videos you can see some of the chickens sharing some food with momma cat, and of our new foal being born just a few weeks ago.

My dad decided to hatch a couple of eggs for Easter one year, and he even rigged an incubator for them. Daisy, the chicken who survived our not feeding her chick starter, was a feisty bird with an enormous comb and a crow loud enough that we thought she was a rooster–until we found 25 eggs in the woods behind our house. But no other animal would tangle with her, much less have babies in her laying nest. She had our collie on the run, and even survived a near-fatal encounter with another neighborhood dog, opening one eye just as we had finished administering last rites and were about to bury her. Long live Daisy!